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Glass strategy: Hanford’s enhanced waste glass program
The mission of the Department of Energy’s Office of River Protection (ORP) is to complete the safe cleanup of waste resulting from decades of nuclear weapons development. One of the most technologically challenging responsibilities is the safe disposition of approximately 56 million gallons of radioactive waste historically stored in 177 tanks at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
ORP has a clear incentive to reduce the overall mission duration and cost. One pathway is to develop and deploy innovative technical solutions that can advance baseline flow sheets toward higher efficiency operations while reducing identified risks without compromising safety. Vitrification is the baseline process that will convert both high-level and low-level radioactive waste at Hanford into a stable glass waste form for long-term storage and disposal.
Although vitrification is a mature technology, there are key areas where technology can further reduce operational risks, advance baseline processes to maximize waste throughput, and provide the underpinning to enhance operational flexibility; all steps in reducing mission duration and cost.
Yanhui Wang, Qiao Jiang, Yexin Yang, Jianfeng Cheng, Chenyang Bao, Yuelong Pan, Yu Liu, Gang Yang, Yangchun Leng, Xianguo Tuo
Nuclear Technology | Volume 208 | Number 12 | December 2022 | Pages 1894-1907
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2022.2083749
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The alteration of the morphology of bentonite, a key barrier to isolating high-level radioactive waste in deep geological repositories under long-term interaction with groundwater, was studied. Bentonite colloids were prepared from Gaomiaozi bentonite, and its various properties were analyzed by various characterization methods. The effects of various factors on the adsorption of Cs(I) and Co(II) on bentonite colloids were investigated by batch static adsorption experiments. The results showed that the colloids were mainly composed of montmorillonite and were lamellar in shape, with a zeta potential of −enton mV and an average size of approximately 209.10 nm. The adsorption of Cs(I) and Co(II) by the colloids was a rapid process, and 31.78 and 88.24 mg/g, respectively, were adsorbed at equilibrium. Pseudo-second-order kinetic fitting showed that chemisorption plays a dominant role and acid-base interactions affect adsorption by influencing the stability of colloids and the chemical form of simulated nuclides. This work can be helpful for evaluating the safety of waste repositories.
